Saturday, August 27, 2016

Becoming Jeanette Winterson

Today my favorite writer turns 57. Happy Birthday to you, Jeanette Winterson! May you remain the same incredibly inspiring writer who is not afraid to speak her mind!

You all know that Brexit happened but you may not be aware how vocal she has been about it and how she no longer thinks that Britain, with all the ugly changes, is her country. I love the fact that, while revisiting classic stories such as Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale" in her latest novel "The Gap of Time" (2015) she can still remain grounded in the present and not shy away from having a pertinent opinion about what happens in Britain and around the world.

In an article she wrote this June, she states something that now seems clear for most of us:

"I am an optimist by nature. I believe in solutions. We need solutions to the absolute failure of the neoliberal Project Few, whereby capitalism has been hijacked to serve the rich, where investing for the long term has been replaced by short-term profiteering, and where globalisation has been allowed to wreck local economies in the name of free trade."

She has a willingness to take risks and challenge herself and her readers that has remained constant throughout her career of more than 30 years. She is one of the most ambitious and inventive writers I have come across and I can't wait to (re)read her creative writing!

"My two pillars are art and love and I had to learn both."

Here is a short interview with her in Australia this May, at the Sydney Writers' Festival: